History 17
 
 

It was generally considered that those with the Gift, known as the Starpeople (the Dhillarearë) or the Singers first appeared in the Inner Kingdom at the end of the Age of Elementals, some five thousand years before the events recorded in The Gift. Records or even a count of years were not kept until the founding of Afinil during the Dawn Age, more than a thousand years after the end of the Age of Elementals. There was a tradition that as the Elementals withdrew into their natural forms, "somewhat of their power dispersed from them and was taken up in human form; and so there appeared, in all places where the Elementals had dwelt, the Starpeople. And they were so named because their eyes held a distant fire, as if they had themselves come from the stars, and they delighted in the fire of the stars and so, unlike other peoples who feared and cursed the Darkness, they loved the Night, and called it sacred." 18

There were, of course, other traditions, including a durable theory that Bards arrived from the West shortly after the disastrous Wars of the Elementals reshaped the lands of Edil-Amarandh. Another account had it that the Bards appeared first in the North, being forced South from the lands now inhabited by the nomad peoples of Zmarkan. The truth behind these competing theories, which became popular after the Restoration, might well be that many Bards of Annar found their linking with the Elementals, however far back, to be disreputable; for the Elementals had been held in mistrust by Annarens since the alliance of the Winterking with the Nameless One. It was this alliance which led to the defeat of Recabarra, Queen of Lirion, and Laurelin, last King of Afinil, and the evils which followed: the slaughter of the Dhyllin, the razing of Lirion and Imbral, and the tyranny over the Inner Kingdom which came to be known as the Great Silence. 

The Restoration of the Monarchy and the Bards was chronicled many times. "The story of the downfall of the Nameless One is long and hard and desperate, and many parts of that tale never returned from darkness," wrote Ghoran of Desor. "I have often thought of those who fought him, lonely and afraid and hopeless, knowing no whisper of their courage would meet any new dawn. For many generations the land was in thrall, and the Keepers of the Light fled and hid in far places, keeping secret the Knowing, the Lore, the Singing, the Speech. And in time a King appeared from the West, where the bloodline of Laurelin, last King of Imbral, had been kept alive in hiding. Maninaë, helmed with Light out of the deeps of time, took up his fell inheritance, and through great suffering the powers of the Nameless were turned against him, and at last the realm of Annar was released from slavery and the Balance restored. That was a time of great joy." 19

Maninaë is credited with the establishment of the Schools (Libridha) around Annar, and decentralising the influence of the Bards. "And at that time Maninaë determined to make his seat in Norloch, Southwards in Annar at the mouth of the Aleph River, and built a great and fair city, and appointed the Circle of the High Bards, and there he and the Queen Marva dwelt in peace. But neither did he wish that the Lore and the Singing should become hidden and secret, the knowledge only of a select priesthood. He decided the Lore would be more safely kept in many centres, and so across Annar he established the Schools," said Ghoran of Desor. 20 Twenty five Schools were established in every region of Edil-Amarandh and became centres of learning and culture. To an extent this was merely a formalisation of a situation which had already occurred: communities of Bards existed in all the Seven Kingdoms, where they had been driven during the Great Silence, and had been instrumental in the defeat of the Nameless One. 

Norloch flourished as the centre of the Light in Annar, being both the seat of government and the highest School of the Light, which two authorities were at this stage formally separated by Manianaë's relinquishment of his Bard status. 
 
 

Society
 
 

It is not only the origin of the Bards which remain shrouded in mystery, but the reason for the appearance of the Gift in any individual. Bloodlines were no guarantee of a Gift, which could die out in a family in which it was previously strong and appear in a family in which it was previously unknown. This characteristic had a profound effect on the social and political organisations of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms. 21

Bardic communities, partly for this reason and also by reason of Bards' longevity, sometimes more than three times the lifespan of an ordinary human being, were remarkably tolerant. Bigotries of sex or race were unknown in Afinil, as prejudice of any kind was thought to cloud judgement and abjured as a sign of corruption of the Mystery of Barding. The Bards also venerated what they called "The Way of the Heart", which was considered a major component of understanding the Silence of the White Flame (there were mystics who wrote long poems on this subject, the most famous being The Birds of Anakatin by Lorica of Turbansk). The Bards had a sophisticated culture of erotic art, although the Western idea of the libertine was unknown, and romantic love was considered a central mystery. Bearing children and childrearing were also honoured, and were interestingly related to eroticism in a way which again is unknown in the West, though some vestige of that might be discerned in the Archaic Greek child-god Eros. The long life of Bards, which meant that childrearing occupied a relatively small proportion of their lives, meant that women were never considered merely procreators of children, as they were in traditional Christian dogmas, and it appears that childcare was considered a responsibility not only of both parents but of all adults socially connected to a child: the family was a much broader concept than the contemporary nuclear family, or even the older extended family. Homosexual love was not considered aberrant, and was never persecuted as it was in some less civilised regions of Edil-Amarandh. It was celebrated in many popular lays, such as the Lay of Lamark and Colun, just as the lays of Andomian and Beruldh or Ardina and Ardhor celebrated the love between man and woman, or man and Elidhu. 

This ethos of tolerance lasted better in the Seven Kingdoms than it did in Annar, where the machinations of the First Circle during the Middle Years began certain imbalances, including the appointment of fewer and fewer women to the Circle. 22 By N945, no women had been appointed as Bards of the First or Second Circle within living memory: and this in itself became the justification for appointing no more. This tendency was strongly resisted in the Schools of the Seven Kingdoms, and was often condemned as a distortion of the Balance. 23 Nevertheless, from circa N500 on, a patristic ideology was aggressively argued by successive Bards. Studies of Bard lists in the various Schools revealed some fascinating figures. They show that by N700 , every member of Norloch's First and Second Circle was male, and there were only three female Bards in the entire School. This contrasts sharply with Schools such as Baladh, Pellinor and Innail, where the instatement of Minor Bards and appointment of Bards to the Circle largely reflected the demographics of the surrounding population: the proportion of women instated and appointed to positions of authority was generally about 52 per cent, and Bards came from all social classes. 24 Moreover, in Norloch the lists reveal that the Bards instated were for the most part from more powerful and wealthy families, and there is evidence that minor Bards from low-status families, such as Pilanel, and women, were sent to try their luck at other Schools; actions which were explicitly against the Charter of Schools set down by Manianaë. 25 This shift, which progressed slowly but inexorably over the centuries, began with the incorporation of the Triple Sceptre of the Monarchy into the authority of the White Flame, until under Enkir of Norloch at the time of the events of The Gift, the writings and teaching of women began to be actively suppressed, and women were at first forbidden to be taught the arts of self defence or warfare, and, finally, any of the Arts at all. 26
 
 

Culture
 
 

The Bards created an extraordinarily sophisticated culture. It is still almost impossible to comprehend the extent of the rich trove of the Annar Scripts, which is believed to consist of almost the entire Library of Norloch, itself a repository of many scripts from all the other Schools. Translation of the scripts has so far barely scraped the surface of what is available and here I can give only the most schematic outline of Bardic achievements. While some scholars have wished to compare the Bardic culture with Mediaeval Europe, citing its relative technological backwardness, its culture was much closer to the humanistic Renaissance in its scientific curiosity and complexity. The truth is that neither comparison applies: both obscure the essential strangeness of the Bards.

They did not distinguish, as we do, between arts and sciences: the alienation of these branches of knowledge in contemporary society would have baffled a Bard, who was accustomed to thinking of all knowledge as part of a single Knowing. A major reason for this was that their system of representation was not based, as Western knowledge is, on Aristotelian notions of categorisation, but on systems of relationship. 27 This profound difference accounts, perhaps, for the very sophisticated understanding the Bards had of what are now known as sciences of complexity (the biological sciences, for example). A science which depended on laboratory experimentation, for example, simply didn't exist, although it is known that the Schools of the Suderain included extremely advanced mathematicians and that the Bards of Baladh formulated and used physical laws in their astronomical observations. They were aware of atoms and sub-atomic particles, and theorised matter and energy as musical vibratory forces, anticipating quantum physics and String Theory, and the Bard Thorkon of Turbansk proposed something which looked very like the Theory of Relativity. 28

More astonishing discoveries include the fact that the Bards had a working theory of evolution and natural selection, which becomes very clear in the many texts written around the game of Gis, which was very popular in Bardic culture. Many Bards wrote about the game, but it was Intathen of Gent who first theorised Gis as a model of competing populations of species, and even of evolutionary tendencies within a single psyche. 29 Malikil of Jerr-Niken theorised genetic inheritance in N755 in The Loom of Light, which recorded her meticulous observations of breeding and cross-pollinating ikil plants. It is even possible, given the prevalence of the symbol of the double helix in Bardic writing, that the Bards knew about DNA.

Unsurprisingly, their medical skills were highly advanced, although many practices also depended on the powers which were associated with the Speech, and so remain mysterious. The Speech, which the Bards considered to be the basis of their magical powers, is something of which we still know and understand very little. Most experts believe that Bards knew about bacteria and viruses, and some argue it is likely they observed them - there is evidence from astronomical observations that the science and practice of optics was highly developed, and it is possible they may have invented microscopes, although there is as yet no proof of that. Be that as it may, it is known that medical practice stressed the importance of hygiene to prevent infection and that Bards practised inoculation against disease. There even exist instructions for producing antibiotic potions to "extinguish the invading disease-spores" 30 .

Bardic literature and arts are astonishing in their variety and profusion, and include great masterpieces of music, poetry and painting. They had developed a complex system of notating music, which they venerated as the art closest to the Light, and much of the music so far deciphered sounds very "modern" to the listening ear. Bards delighted in metrical and linguistic inventiveness and employed a wide range of forms in their poetic literature; their aesthetic abhorred dogmatism of any kind as a "dimming of the Light". Only the beautiful illuminations of the scripts now remain to us as reminders of their visual art, although the writings tell of extraordinary architecture and signal the widespread prevalence of murals and sculpture in all Bardic communities. The most complete picture of Bardic culture yet discovered is in The Riddle of the Treesong, and it is widely speculated that this book was written to combat misinformation about Bards then widespread in Annar. 31

Unfortunately the central spiritual tenets of Barding - what was meant by the Light, for example, or much beyond general and extremely ambiguous notes about their idea of the afterlife - remain beyond our understanding at present. In part this was because of the Bardic practice of communicating the most important mysteries orally: it is crucial to remember that in Bardic culture orality and literacy ran side by side, as occurred in Classical Greece during the few centuries of its greatest achievements. It is also critical to understand that pivotal concepts like the Light and the Balance did not imply an anthropomorphic notion of God. Without disputing the spiritual significance given to the Light and the strong moral imperatives contained in the Balance, it seems fair to say that they were much closer to forces of nature than to monotheistic notions of a punishing and rewarding Creator. 32 It is tempting, if perhaps anachronistic, to speculate that, despite their magery, the Bards may have created one of the most genuinely secular societies ever known.